


last, first christmas

by thesemovingparts



Series: if we make it through december [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: (the narrative kind not the ptsd kind), Angst, Christmas, College Student Peter Parker, F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Phone Sex, Recreational Drug Use, Underage Drinking, canon nudged to the left, they are CopingTM, this is a companion piece to an existing work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:14:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28196742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesemovingparts/pseuds/thesemovingparts
Summary: “You okay?”“Yeah,” he sighed. “I’ve got May’s place all to myself tonight. It’s-- empty.”“Yeah,” she replied in understanding. Her apartment was feeling pretty empty too.Less so though, with him on the line.*OR: Ned Leeds is gone. This is their last Christmas with him, and their first Christmas without.
Relationships: May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: if we make it through december [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2065605
Comments: 24
Kudos: 53





	last, first christmas

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to wait until closer to Christmas to post this, but realized I'm probably going to be pretty preoccupied as we get closer to the holiday so here we are on this lovely Sunday afternoon instead. 
> 
> This is a companion piece to "but, at least" (which I have tried to link four times which has only made ao3 angry at me lmao) and while I can't force you to read that first, and although it's probably not entirely necessary, I do urge you to check it out before this one in order to get the full story <3
> 
> "but, at least" was the first fic I wrote this year and for this fandom, so I thought it would be nice to close out the year by revisiting it. It's a universe that's very close to my heart, so I hope you enjoy this look at some of the missing moments from that story. 
> 
> thanks for stopping by and happy holidays <3 
> 
> love,  
> prem

**Last.**

_“You’re being a pussy, Jones.”_

_“Gross,” she grimaced at him, hand close to his where they were both holding the rail for balance on the subway. “You know I hate that word.”_

_“Why’d you think I used it?” Ned laughed._

_“You think insulting me as much as possible is gonna get me to agree to this?” she quirked a brow at him. “How’d you get into MIT again?”_

_“Come on,” he leaned in closer to her, bumped his shoulder against hers jovially. “You are so much tougher than this. Is Michelle Jones really gonna let her stupid ex keep her from enjoying the holiday season?”_

_“I can enjoy the holiday season just fine,” she pushed back. “But if you think you won’t regret being the only buffer between the two of us for this little dinner of yours…”_

_MJ trailed off as the train came to their stop, pulling her scarf closer around her as she stepped out onto the platform and not complaining when Ned grabbed onto the strap of her backpack so as to not lose her in the crowd._

_“We always do trio Christmas,” he whined as they climbed the steps to street level. “I’m not throwing that away just because you two are going through a fucking_ rough patch--”

_MJ snorted. “We broke up, Ned. It’s not a rough patch, we’re literally not talking.”_

_“Yeah but, like, not for legitimate reasons,” he brushed her off._

_“Distance is a perfectly legitimate reason to break up,” MJ groused. “You and Betty--”_

_“Broke up because we’d rather be friends,” Ned smirked at her. “Would you rather be friends with Peter?”_

_“I didn’t agree to come with you today to talk about my failed relationship,” she shot him a look._

_Ned put up his hands in acquiescence. “Alright,” he sighed with equal parts exasperation and amusement-- at her heartbreak of all things. “But we are still having trio Christmas and you are buying him a present today because you both owe me for a month and a half of being a goddamn go-between.”_

_He stopped walking in front of the electronics store they had been searching for and looked to her expectantly, all raised eyebrows and smug enthusiasm._

_“He already agreed, didn’t he,” MJ deadpanned dejectedly._

_“Oh, he broke almost immediately,” Ned beamed at her. “I knew you’d be a tougher nut to crack-- but I have about six other lines of reasoning if you’d like to hear them?”_

_MJ lifted her scarf to cover her face and groaned loudly into the knit, knowing it was a losing battle and feeling her heart thrum quicker at the thought of being stuck in a room with him again._

_“Twenty-third, right?” she conceded and Ned’s flushed cheeks got somehow brighter._

_“Hell yeah,” he grinned, swinging the shop door open. Over his shoulder he made sure she knew, “Also, we’re doing it at your place since you’re the only one with an apartment in the city-- thanks!”_

_“Watch your back, Leeds,” she replied. “I’ll fuck you up.”_

_He laughed-- bright as the sun against freshly fallen snow._

**First.**

MJ was still awake the night she got the phone call.

She had taken a long nap in the middle of the day because she had pulled one too many late nights at the library during finals week and conceded to fucking up her sleep schedule by catching up on a little bit of her missing rest. So she was awake, curled up on one side of her bed while her laptop played the next in the YouTube hole of music videos from the early two-thousands that she’d fallen into when her phone rang.

Her phone rang and it wasn’t the first time that Peter had called her in the middle of the night-- although in recent months it usually meant he had downed a couple of drinks and was feeling particularly nostalgic.

Her phone rang and she snorted at his contact information filling her screen because he was probably done with classes for the semester by now and celebrating and MJ didn’t have it in her to ignore his call.

Her phone rang and she picked up.

“Hey, doofus,” she paused the video on her laptop and rolled onto her back to stare at the fairy lights she’d hung up around the corners of the little nook where her bed resided.

“Em--” he choked on a breath on the other end of the line and MJ pushed herself up on her elbow. “ _Em.”_

“Are you okay?” she asked, realizing all at once that, for maybe the first time, she had been wrong about Peter Parker’s intentions. “Peter, are you hurt?”

It was the most obvious assumption, although she wasn’t sure how he would get hurt patrolling if he was spending Christmas at the lake house like she had thought was the case.

“No-- I’m, um-- shit,” he sounded positively broken, falling apart at the seams with very little hope of being stitched back together with any sort of efficiency. “I just talked to Abby.”

“Leeds?” MJ questioned, trying to push him towards the point since he seemed to be struggling to get there on his own. “Is _she_ okay? I’m in the city, I can go to her--”

“It’s Ned, Em,” Peter cut her off in a sudden moment of self-collection. “He was in an accident tonight and he didn’t make it.”

MJ was sitting upright at the edge of her bed at this point, having prepared herself to throw on a coat and run to wherever she was needed, but at that revelation all of her muscles locked up, all of her joints, all of her brain functions stalling behind a wall of disbelief.

“Fuck you,” she snapped. “That’s not fucking funny, Parker.”

“It’s not a joke,” he replied with such utter exhaustion in his voice that she had no option but to believe him, she just hadn’t figured out _how_ quite yet. “I swear this is real, MJ-- I’m-- I’m sorry--”

“Ned died?” she said, in desperate need of confirmation. “He-- How? How did he--?”

“Car accident,” Peter cleared his throat, voice thick with sobs that he wasn’t letting her hear. “I don’t-- have the details yet but he’s-- he was DOA.”

MJ’s tense muscles were beginning to tremble with something deeper than cold-- it had to be, considering the sheen of sweat appearing on her skin and the racing beat of her heart. It didn’t make sense to her, because Ned was, for lack of a better phrasing, one of the most lively people she had ever known.

He was bubbling over with it, with an enthusiasm for the world that she herself had never been quite blessed with, but had felt and heard and actually witnessed in technicolor while in the presence of Ned Leeds.

“MJ, are you still there?” Peter asked quietly.

“I have to go,” she responded in a hurry. She was about to break, she couldn’t let him hear her break when he was already so very, very deep in the turmoil of the night. “I’m-- so sorry, Peter. If you need anything at all…”

“You too,” he offered. “Anything, MJ. I’m-- Just. Anything.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” she couldn’t acknowledge the sincerity of his offer, the way she wished she had it in her to ask him to hold her hand.

“Yeah,” Peter said. “Later.”

The moment that MJ hung up, knuckles gripped white around the case of her phone and feet cold despite the hot grief radiating off of her body, her stomach retaliated. She stumbled heavily to the bathroom, bruised her knees with the force of falling onto the tile, and emptied her guts messily, noisily, painfully into the toilet bowl.

Her hands shook too aggressively to properly hold her own hair back and the buzzing in her ears was growing louder with each passing moment and by the time she was dry heaving past an inflamed throat she still had yet to cry.

MJ stripped down to her underwear, not even bothering to get entirely naked before sitting in the shower and washing her own vomit out of her hair.

Whatever part of her brain usually handled problem solving had gone out of commission, and by that point it was past two in the morning, and she didn’t know who to call. So she went back to bed with wet hair and set up a Google alert for Ned’s name after struggling to find any public report of what had happened.

She didn’t sleep, and she waited, and when the article was posted sometime in the early hours of the morning as the sun began to rise on Christmas Eve, she sent it to Peter. Because she couldn’t wrap her head around it, and he would understand.

God. Of all people, poor Peter Parker would fucking understand.

**Last.**

_“This is a bad idea.”_

_“That’s the seventh time you’ve said that this morning,” Ned laughed._

_“Yeah, well, that’s only because I’m right,” Peter fired back with jittery indignation._

_He was helping Ned carry pyrex containers of food from his mom’s kitchen to his car so they could take it over to MJ’s place and was actively regretting every decision he had ever made that brought him to this point._

_“It’s one afternoon, you fucking baby,” Ned rolled his eyes. “I’ll even let you drink and promise to get you home safe afterwards.”_

_“Nope, not drinking,” Peter shook his head frantically. “Drinking around her will only make this worse for all of us.”_

_Ned looked at him quizzically for a beat before disgusted realization pulled at his expression._

_“Oh, come on Peter, gross,” he gagged dramatically as he shut the trunk harder than probably necessary._

_“I’m just being honest!” Peter threw his hands up in the air._

_“I genuinely can’t stand you sometimes.”_

_“It’s not like we plan for it to happen,” he slid into the passenger seat of Ned’s car as they prepared to make their way across town. “It just sort of-- does?”_

_“Dude, sure, but like not since you broke up,” Ned laughed._

_Peter got quiet, his answer to a question that hadn’t even been spoken clear on his face. Ned looked across the car as he twisted the key in the ignition and witnessed Peter’s sheepish posture._

_“No,” Ned shook his head. “Not since. Peter, not_ since.”

_A grimace on Peter’s part had Ned letting his forehead fall against the steering wheel hard enough to emit a quick, sharp beep of the horn._

_“Sorry?” Peter said, but Ned refused to look at him as he sat back up._

_“Honestly, there are words that only you two make me feel the need to use,” Ned said as he pulled away from the curb. “Shit like_ horn-dog _and, I dunno,_ strumpet.”

_Peter snorted. “Strumpet?”_

_“It means you’re a slut, Parker.”_

_“You’re the one that’s been pushing this dinner for weeks,” Peter propped his feet up on the dashboard casually, only for Ned to slap them back down into the foot well. “So if it’s super awkward, that’s on you, my guy.”_

_“If you so much as think about sex with MJ in front of my face I’m getting you fixed. Just for the record.”_

_“Your present is really cool this year,” Peter replied pleadingly. “If that helps.”_

_Ned shot him a side-long look. “We’ll see,” he said, but Peter could tell he wasn’t actually mad so much as exasperated with his role as mediator between two people whose relationship was too mixed up to actually keep track of._

_“But let me guess,” Peter deadpanned. “I’m on thin ice?”_

_“Oh, the thinnest,” Ned grinned at him._

**First.**

Peter had a breakdown by the front door of the lake house on Christmas Eve, sobbing into Tony’s shoulder as he convinced Peter not to run away, that that wasn’t something any of them wanted.

He did still end up running away a few minutes later, just to Tony’s garage instead of all the way back to Queens. They were walking on eggshells around him, trying to be what he needed but not entirely sure what that was.

That was okay, that was completely reasonable in fact, because even Peter himself couldn’t quite parse out what would help prop him up like a functioning human at that point. So, he retreated, isolated himself amongst half-finished projects and blueprints.

He took apart the components of what appeared to be some new Avengers tech that Tony was working on and then put it back together wrong just so he could watch it spark. Just so there was a problem in front of him that he could solve with his eyes closed, without thinking, without all the frustration of uncertainty.

“If you mess that thing up too bad, you’ll have to answer to Nat,” Tony said as he walked in, setting a plate of cookies beside Peter’s workstation, even the smell of which made his stomach turn.

“I can take her,” Peter said, having to clear his throat past disuse and lingering tears. “Hand me that allen wrench?”

Tony wordlessly grabbed said wrench from a nearby countertop and handed it over before sitting heavily in the stool across from Peter.

“What’re you doing down here?” Peter asked without looking up from his self-imposed assignment.

“I was elected to make sure you weren’t doing anything too self destructive,” Tony replied, teasing but sincere.

Peter snorted. “Where’s the cutoff line?”

“Not entirely sure,” Tony deadpanned. “But I bet intentionally creating minor explosions is getting close.”

The apparatus in Peter’s hands sparked with maddening timing, forcing him to drop it with a quiet _shit._

“Yeah, that’s enough of that,” Tony said, standing back up. “Come on, we’re gonna get some food in you.”

“I’m not hungry,” Peter made no move to follow, so Tony paused in his journey back out of the workshop.

“You know,” he said. “If I don’t get you to eat, we’ll have to bring in our heavy hitter.”

Peter looked at Tony skeptically. “May?”

The look Tony gave him was enough to know that he was right, and the way Peter’s shoulders slumped was enough to tell Tony in turn that he had won.

“Come on,” Tony nodded his head towards the door. “Happy’s making some sort of comfort soup from his childhood.”

Peter gave a passing glance to the tech on the table before him and grimaced.

“I fucked this thing up pretty bad,” he said sheepishly.

Tony tilted his head knowingly, hands in his pockets as he studied Peter for all that he was-- sinking and without a paddle.

“We’ll fix it.”

**Last.**

_“Don’t you dare hang that,” MJ pointed at Ned accusingly across the kitchen. “The audacity it takes to bring mistletoe into my apartment.”_

_“You don’t want to kiss me?” Ned teased her._

_“I would rather drink actual dirty bong water than kiss either of you idiots,” she said flatly as she unpacked the tote bag of food that Ned and Peter had brought._

_“Well, that’s a blatant lie,” Peter interjected from the couch with far too much amusement._

_“I’m gonna spit in your stuffing, Parker.”_

_“Nothing I haven’t tasted before, Em!”_

_MJ shot a look to Ned who just offered a sheepish smile in return._

_“Can you get him to act like a person for ten minutes, please?” she asked with a brushed off wave of the hand towards Peter, lounged back on the couch and repeatedly tossing a Christmas ornament into the air and catching it._

_“If you think I have any control over all of that, you’re greatly overestimating my pull as a roommate,” Ned replied._

_MJ rolled her eyes, but the look she gave Ned said_ fair enough.

_“Parker,” she called out instead. “Get in here and help warm up this food or I’m telling May you forgot your manners.”_

_It was almost instantaneous, the speed with which he materialized in the kitchen with a frown on his face and a slump to his shoulders._

_“Pretty sure you’re not supposed to keep in touch with your ex’s aunts but whatever,” he grumbled, even as he began to help._

_“Pretty sure May likes MJ better than you,” Ned chimed in, sticking his finger in the mashed potatoes and placing it directly in his mouth._

_Peter and MJ both made a near-identical face of disgust._

_“Dude, gross,” Peter said at the same time that MJ exclaimed, “Are your hands clean?”_

_Ned looked back and forth between the two of them, eyebrows high on his forehead as a bright laugh bubbled up out of his lungs as though of its own accord._

_“Alright, Mom and Dad,” he deadpanned before he turned around to wash his hands and leaving the two of them to strategically not meet each other’s eyes for the following fifteen minutes._

_All things considered, it wasn’t all that different from most of their get togethers over the previous handful of years. MJ’s boys were just as easy to tease as they always had been, and their presence made her feel as young as it ever had._

_They were her people, even when it got awkward to sit next to Peter and nearly forget she wasn’t allowed to put her hand on his thigh anymore and even when she realized that she still kind of wanted to._

_Dinner was delicious and it was also terrible because Peter had brought too-old leftovers from May’s fridge instead of bothering to cook and Ned held the mistletoe above his and Peter’s heads after a glass of four-dollar wine each just to make MJ laugh and the music was loud but not as loud as them, talking over each other to try and tell the same story about senior year decathlon and how it almost got blown up by a local super-villain that they told every time they saw each other._

_It was nice, to have their stupid little family who had survived so much together back in the same room. MJ thought that maybe adulthood could be a little less nerve-wracking if this was what it meant to grow up-- pooling together limited resources with a family of idiots just doing their best to get by._

_Even with them off at MIT and her still in the city, they had each other’s backs. The warmth in MJ’s cheeks came as much from that realization as it did from the wine._

**First.**

MJ spent Christmas day with her mother’s family.

As the eldest of her cousins, it was relatively easy for her to fade into the background and let the little ones take up all of the space in her grandmother’s living room with their unconcerned joy and laughter and games.

They didn’t know why their big cousin Chelle kept stepping out to whichever room was the least crowded, to the front porch, to the upstairs bathroom that was farthest from the commotion. They didn’t know why her hands shook as she served herself dinner or why cutting turkey into bite-sized pieces for little Thatcher, age six, made her even quieter than she usually was.

The adults got it. Her mother had filled them in on this new development in her life and the fact that she was _handling it._

“You know how she gets,” MJ overheard from a room away. She was sad but not deaf. “She won’t talk to me about it.”

“Poor girl.”

“She needs to have a good cry. That one keeps things too bottled up.”

“Poor, poor girl.”

MJ sent a text to Peter under the table while she ignored her food and ignored her family.

_turkey tastes like mourning food don’t you think?_

_pretends to be all warm and comforting but is really just dry_

She tucked her phone in between her legs on the seat of her chair and fed herself a bite of mashed potatoes as if anything made any fucking sense, only to be disrupted by a call buzzing in from Peter himself.

MJ declined the call and immediately texted him: _literally eating Christmas dinner_

“Michelle--”

“I know, one second,” she brushed her mother’s warning gaze off. Her best friend was dead and she’d text at the dinner table if she wanted.

_grandma jones’s cooking still that bad huh?_

MJ’s lips ticked up at one side almost imperceptibly.

_still better than that shit you gave us last year,_ she replied even as her heart twisted at the memory, at all of the memories, stacked right on top of each other and squeezing themselves in between the very vertebrae of her spine.

_oof harsh_

_don’t you know i’m grieving??_

MJ had to scratch at her nose to cover the look spreading across her face, fingers buzzing with near-hysterical energy borne from dark humor and exhaustion and a desire to feel human for just a moment, just a _second_ where she didn’t have to focus on the whole rest of it still hanging over her head.

“Michelle, put the phone away,” her mother said.

_getting reprimanded-- so high school_

_call me later_

“Yeah, sorry, Mom,” MJ dropped her phone back into between her knees on the chair and poked at her dinner.

She watched as a final message buzzed in beneath the tablecloth before stuffing a mouthful of potatoes between her lips.

_call you later_

*

He did in fact call her properly the next day.

They talked about teenage pranks and they talked about the things they wanted to be sure they remembered. They talked about a life well-lived and neither of them cried.

It was more than they had talked in months, and an overwhelming regret settled heavily onto the top of MJ’s chest, with just enough weight that it hadn’t yet cracked her ribs but felt as though if she moved too suddenly it very well might.

“We’ll just have to step up for each other,” she told him, as much a promise to herself as anything. As much a request of him.

“Okay,” he responded without hesitation.

She wanted him and needed him and wanted not to need him. But maybe if he needed her too, then that might be okay.

**Last.**

_“You’re overmixing!”_

_“You’re overbearing!”_

_“You’re both really terrible at this.”_

_Only half of the cookies were actually burnt, but the rest of them were tough and also definitely missing a few key ingredients. Maybe sugar? Peter couldn’t really tell, but he did know that they had fucked up somewhere along the line._

_“Oh my god,” MJ grimaced as she took a bite, hand over her mouth as she chewed miserably at the crumbly mess in her mouth. “That’s not food.”_

_“The icing is… wet?” Ned frowned. “Did we miss a step?”_

_“I think the first step we missed was not to try and bake,” Peter snorted as he hopped up to sit on the counter of MJ’s kitchen and look out over the warzone of powdered sugar and messy bowls that they had created._

_“It’s festive!” Ned argued as MJ finally gave up and spat her cookie into the trash._

_“Nobody eat the rest of these,” she said. “I’m half convinced we accidentally created a lethal poison.”_

_Ned’s face fell, disappointment evident in his eyes in a way that made Peter’s heart ache. He thought maybe Ned was the best of them all, in part because he felt things so deeply, because he got so invested in the search for joy._

_Peter knew guilt and he knew responsibility, but Ned Leeds was the one he looked to when he wanted to understand how to make someone smile, how to make them laugh, how to make their day just a touch brighter than it was before._

_“They’re not that bad, are they?” Ned asked. “I mean, at least we had fun?”_

_“Dude, I think fucking it up was the most fun part of this,” Peter assured him with a grin. “You know why?”_

_“Why?” Ned looked at him quizzically as MJ muttered a quiet_ uh-oh.

_“Because this batch of cookies was born to prank!” Peter threw his hands up enthusiastically._

_And Ned laughed, so nothing else mattered._

**First.**

It was their first night back in the city after Christmas, and Peter had spent three hours sitting on the fire escape with his feet dangling out in freezing, open air.

He was wrapped up in two coats and a blanket, face numb with the bite of the wind and curls damp with slowly falling, intermittent flakes of almost-snow. Not quite as white, not quite as frozen, not quite as sparkling in the Christmas lights of the building across the way.

The window behind him slid open, a beat of quiet as sleet settled into the fabric of his pants.

“Come inside, Peter,” May said, heavy with an aching pleading. “I made hot chocolate?”

He clenched his jaw down on the inside of his cheek, took a breath, and then wordlessly pulled himself up and through the window.

*

“Do you think you ever really moved on?” he asked, pillow clutched in his lap and looking for all the world like a self-soothing child. His mug was long abandoned on the coffee table after drinking in quiet comfort beside his aunt. “After Ben?”

May sighed at the other end of the couch. It wasn’t judgmental, mostly just contemplative.

“I’m not sure even I know what _moving on_ means,” she said earnestly. “I’ve found a way to be happy more often than I’m not. That’s probably someone’s definition, right?”

“Is it yours?”

“I think if it was that black-and-white, there wouldn’t be so many stories about grief, Peter,” May explained, simple and true.

Peter buried his face in his pillow and breathed through the warmth of the fabric, filled his lungs with the scent of fabric softener and his own shampoo.

If it was that black-and-white, he wouldn’t keep reliving this same conversation.

**Last.**

_“I was talking to Betty the other day--”_

_“Betty Brant?!” Peter exclaimed delightfully. “Is that happening again?”_

_Ned rolled his eyes with an exasperated huff of breath, but Peter leaned forward on his elbows across the cafe table, coffee between his palms and a beaming smile on his face._

_“You know,” Ned deadpanned. “Not all of us have weirdly complicated sort of but not really friends with benefits relationships with our exes.”_

_“I don’t know to whom you’re referring--”_

_“Some of us are just regular friends with our exes,” Ned smiled at him teasingly. “You know, like regular human friends who don’t get drunk and make out with the person we’re supposedly incompatible with.”_

_“What’s new with your regular human friend Betty Brant then?” Peter replied sarcastically, deflecting from the conversation he was uninterested in having._

_“You’re not gonna believe what she heard about Brad Davis…”_

_It made Peter feel lighter, the way it could still be like this between them after so many years of friendship. The gossip still felt fresh despite being sort of old hat, and the trips out for coffee in between family holiday responsibilities were just as refreshing even after living together in a tiny room all semester._

_His love for Ned Leeds was unlike any other in his life so far, probably ever if he was being honest with himself._

_After all, you don’t let a person watch you grow into who you actually are without forming something unbreakable, something completely unique._

_“Dude, wait until I tell you about Missus Hernandez next door--!”_

**First.**

Peter called MJ a lot in the days following the death of Ned Leeds.

Sometimes they sat in silence, sometimes he broke down crying, but it wasn’t until December twenty-ninth that he heard MJ actually begin to vocalize the complicated mix of emotions he knew had been brewing inside of her.

“You can talk about it with me,” he told her that night, tucked away on the twin bed in May’s apartment that he knew would always be there for him no matter what else happened. “You know that right?”

“I dunno, Peter,” she sighed in response, but she sounded closer to breaking than she had at any point in the past week.

He took a deep breath. “Please,” he said, and her breath hitched.

“I want to tell you everything I’ve been feeling,” she forced out. “But I don’t think I have the words for it-- they’ve just been-- they’ve been leaking out of me in this meanness that I don’t actually mean and wasted fucking hours and I’m so, so afraid that at some point it’s all just gonna be gone.

“And what happens then?” she continued, some sort of seal on her voice finally breaking. And although she wasn’t crying, Peter could hear her voice trembling, and it was making it more difficult for him to breathe. “What happens when my memory follows the words? What happens when it all keeps leaking out of my fucking ears and he just keeps going, going, going until he’s gone?”

The problem was that he didn’t know how to help her, and the problem beyond that was that he knew he probably couldn’t. Not in any way that counted, not in the way that would bring this thing they had lost back to them.

“MJ…” he breathed after a moment of stilted quiet.

She inhaled shakily, exhaled all in one huff of hot air.

“Please don’t ask me if I’m okay,” she pleaded. “You know how much I hate lying to you.”

“Okay,” he complied.

They went back to silence.

**Last.**

_The steps up to the Leeds apartment were familiar to MJ._

_They were afternoon snacks post-decathlon practice and sketching on the window ledge while her boys built some nonsensical Star Wars Lego set and dropping off stacks of homework the week that Ned had the flu in eleventh grade._

_They were a nostalgia that MJ hadn’t realized she was old enough to feel until she was already feeling it, and a visceral deja vu to a life still being lived._

_Abby Leeds answered the door._

_“MJ!” she grinned, dark hair freshly cropped short and a pair of wire rimmed glasses situated neatly on her face._

_“Hey, Abby,” MJ smiled back at her. “Got something for your brother,” she lifted up the scarf and gloves she had been carrying._

_“God, he’s so scatterbrained it’s embarrassing,” Abby rolled her eyes. “He’s not here, but wanna come in for a minute? We’ve got cookies.”_

_“Yeah, sure,” MJ acquiesced, not one for idle chit chat, but also not one for denying that sweet girl who had squeezed her around the middle on their first meeting and told her--_ my brother says you’re a badass, we’re not supposed to say badass but that’s what he says.

_Abby took the knitwear from MJ’s hands and tossed it haphazardly on the couch next to a backpack that she recognized as Ned’s before leading MJ into the kitchen._

_“How’s school going?” MJ asked. “You’re in sixth grade now, right?”_

_Abby snorted. “I’m fifteen, MJ,” she laughed._

_“No way,” MJ groused teasingly. “No way in hell you’re that old.”_

_“Sorry, grandma,” Abby joked back as she handed a cookie to her. “That’s just the way of things.”_

_MJ took a bite and her eyes got big. “Did you make these?” she asked disbelievingly._

_“Sure did,” Abby beamed._

_“Dude, you should’ve seen the monstrosities we made the other day,” MJ said through a full mouth. “Why didn’t Ned bring you along?”_

_“Because he was too focused on getting you and Peter to stop being idiots,” Abby smirked as MJ choked on her cookie._

_“Christ,” she cleared her throat, hand over her mouth as she shot Abby a look that could level grown men but never Abby Leeds. “You Leeds kids are all the same, huh?”_

_“Persistent and correct?” Abby raised her eyebrows. “Yeah, we’ve got that going for us.”_

_“Yeah, alright,” MJ deadpanned, reaching for the tub of cookies. “You owe me all of these for emotional damages--”_

_“No--” Abby cackled, grabbing for them, but MJ held them out of her reach._

_“I’m pre-law, you wanna go to court over it?”_

_“Those are mine!”_

_“Not anymore!”_

_Abby was trying to wrestle MJ to the couch, tub of cookies still between them, when the front door opened and Ned walked in. He immediately froze at the sight of the commotion, brow quirked in confusion but amusement evident in his bright eyes._

_“Hey… guys,” he said hesitantly as the two girls looked up from their tangle of limbs and crumbs._

_“Your sister is a menace--”_

_“MJ’s trying to steal my cookies!”_

_Ned snorted and then schooled his face._

_“Well,” he said mock seriously, striding over to snatch the half eaten cookie out of MJ’s hand and take a bite of it as he walked away. “As you were.”_

_They both yelled after him, listening to the retreating sound of his boisterous laughter._

_MJ was nostalgic for a moment that wasn’t over yet._

**First.**

When Peter texted her to ask if he could come over at one o’clock in the morning on New Year's Day, she assumed he was probably at least a little bit drunk, but maybe that was only because _she_ was.

MJ had tried to go out, had taken Betty up on her invitation to go to a club with some of her J-school friends, but ended up ditching twenty minutes before the ball dropped. It had been too loud for her, ultimately.

And she had wanted to dance but not with a stranger, and she had wanted to get kissed but only by one guy in particular, so she called herself an uber and left Betty with her friends and changed from her dress and heels into a sports bra and flannel pants the minute she reasonably could.

So she was at home, barely maintaining her comfortable buzz with cheap beer that had been taking up space at the back of her fridge for over a month and debating whether or not getting herself off would make her feel better or worse when her phone chimed four times in quick succession.

_if i came by would that be okay_

_i mean if you’re even home?_

_are you home? if you’re not home could you text me when you’re home so i don’t_

_worry_

Her heart stuttered of its own volition and her skin warmed despite her building’s finicky heater as she slouched lower in her nest of blankets on the couch.

_I’m home,_ she wrote back quickly when three little dots appeared at the bottom of her screen because she could feel him about to backpedal and it was about the last thing she wanted from him. _Should I be worried about you?_

She took another sip of beer as the three little dots reappeared, disappeared, twice over. The smile was involuntary when her phone began to ring.

“Having trouble with the typing there?” she said upon picking up.

“Faster this way,” he responded off-handedly, sounding considerably more sober than she had expected.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I’ve got May’s place all to myself tonight. It’s-- empty.”

“Yeah,” she replied in understanding. Her apartment was feeling pretty empty too.

Less so though, with him on the line.

“Do you still want to come over?” she asked.

“Do you want me to?”

It was a game of chess, if chess was a little more emotionally overwrought.

“I think you should probably stay there,” she said softly, although they could both tell it was a strategic move rather than an emotional one. “Get some rest.”

“Maybe,” Peter breathed. And then, after a moment of dead air: “What are you still doing up?”

“I’ll sleep at some point,” she told him.

“Sure,” he chuckled quietly. “But what are you doing until then?”

“You want to know what I was planning to do with the rest of my night?” she asked with light amusement.

“I asked, didn’t I?” he fired back without any heat.

MJ chewed on the inside of her cheek, considering her options as she traced the lip of her beer with the pad of her thumb. They were both clearly fighting for a reason to stay on the line, and she had one if she was brave enough to use it.

“I was deciding whether or not I should masturbate,” she said flatly, setting the beer aside as she listened to the catch in his breath, the audible swallow on the other end of the line. “What do you think?”

It wouldn’t be the first time they’d helped each other out in this way since their breakup. As much as it peeved her, no one could get under MJ’s skin in quite the same way as Peter Parker, and as much as it disoriented her, she wasn’t about to question why.

“I--” he cut himself off with a breathy laugh. “Yeah, Em. Why not?”

“Well, I-- want to talk to you too,” she said, skin already tingling with anticipation of distraction in the form of intimacy.

And not just intimacy, but a closeness, a connection under which she had almost complete control of her own experience. This she could handle, because although she thought maybe having him in the room with her would be overwhelming in her current state, his voice in her ear might be the exact amount of Peter she needed on that night. As people all across the city, country, world celebrated the start of a new year, a new life, MJ could fall back into a past that was comfortable.

A past where things were different and a past before she started dreading the future.

“No reason you have to choose,” Peter suggested hoarsely after a moment of hesitation, a beat long enough to allow her the chance to back out before they even got started. She didn’t have any intention of taking the out, but she appreciated his consideration nonetheless.

“You wanna listen?” MJ breathed as her fingers ran gently down her sternum, over the material of her sports bra.

“I wanna help,” Peter replied earnestly.

MJ shivered, both at the admission and at the cold touch of her own fingertips across the smooth skin of her stomach, across her nipples beneath soft cotton.

“I think you should join me,” she said. “I think you should touch yourself, Peter.”

_“Fuck,”_ he exhaled, and she knew she had him.

“You want to?” she teased gently-- at him and at the waistband of her sweatpants.

“Fuck you,” he said lightly, the air of a laugh.

MJ breathed out a soft chuckle as just the tips of her fingers smoothed along the elastic of her underwear. It was almost embarrassing, how much his voice alone did for her, how trained her body was to chase down arousal and pleasure just at the sound of his breathing.

On the other end of the line, Peter’s inhales had gone a little unsteady, and MJ pressed the phone closer to her ear.

“Keep talking to me, please,” she pleaded, breathier than she intended as her sense of control slipped.

“Are you touching yourself?” Peter asked. “Or are you doing that thing where you keep dragging it out.”

Her chest flushed with a sense of being so entirely seen, but the ache between her legs reacted in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

“Which way do you prefer?”

“God, Em, I--” his breath hitched. “I want you to feel good. I want to listen while you make yourself feel good.”

And who was she to deny a request like that?

“Yeah, _oh--”_ a finger pulling apart each of her lips and one nestled gently between them, sliding easily across a wetness that was entirely his fault. “Peter-- How-- How fast are you going? I wanna--”

“Slow,” he responded easily. “I’m-- Let’s take our time, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she agreed readily. “Please-- Yeah, Pete. Tell me-- Say something--”

“I’m... Jesus, is it way too fuckin’ crude if I tell you how hard I am?”

MJ laughed, a single finger circling just outside of her clit without touching it. “We’re having phone sex, I think the crudeness comes with the package.”

“Well, I’m really hard, I’m--” he chuckled, and somehow they were laughing while still sounding just as full of desire as they had before. “Remember that hand job you gave me in the bathroom at that Columbia party?”

She did. After he had finished, he had gotten on his knees and stuck his face between her legs like his life depended on it-- which MJ knew he also remembered, which she knew was part of the reason for his reminiscing.

Damn him, but it worked.

“Yeah,” she said, maybe giving a little of herself away as she accidentally slipped a finger across her clit at the same time she spoke.

“I’m-- thinking about how your hands felt,” he admitted, and yeah, he was giving himself away a little bit as well.

“Me too,” she said, choking on something humiliatingly close to a whimper. “Me too.”

“God-- MJ--”

“I know.”

The way it escalated past their plan for slow into something a bit more frantic was telling to what they needed from each other-- a release as much as comfort, to feel understood by someone living a moment so horribly similar to theirs.

Breathing turned ragged as they edged each other on, encouragements towards a mutual goal and strings of _you’re so good, so good, so good_ ringing in MJ’s ears as she rocked against her own hand without ever taking a single shred of clothing off.

The waistband of her pants held her wrist snuggly against her pubic bone and before she knew it she was right on the precipice.

“I’m close,” she gasped. “Peter--”

“Yeah, me too,” he replied with equal vigor. “I want-- Em, I want to hear you come.”

“I, fuck--” she could feel it, right there, right out of her reach. “I need-- I need you to-- Peter, tell me to do it.”

She tucked her chin against her breastbone wrist straining as her fingers worked faster, faster, faster.

“Let go for me,” Peter said, because he understood exactly what she was asking, knew that she was looking for permission to give up control for just a moment, just long enough to relish in a feeling other than the weight of the world. “There you go-- So good, Em, _shit,_ ” he babbled, joining her only seconds later as he heard her tip over the edge, as sounds of pleasure got caught in her throat only to be released in a whining breath.

The thing was, and they were both aware of this as they caught their breath wordlessly across phone lines, that it wasn’t a quick fuck. What they had just done-- it wasn’t a means to an end and about halfway through they realized that they were searching for something other than a mere distraction.

They were looking for each other, that way they felt when they were together, searching for it in whimpers of pleasure and questions of desire, and for a moment they thought maybe they had found it.

Or at the very least gotten close.

“My night sucked,” MJ admitted after they had taken a moment of mutual grounding. “I couldn’t stop thinking about him.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter replied-- empathetic, understanding. “Me too.”

“You made it better, though,” MJ conceded with a softness that not many people got out of her.

Peter breathed deeply-- different from the aroused hitching just minutes earlier, more grounded. MJ’s eyes slipped shut and she wiped her fingers off on her stomach, content despite the lingering despair just on the edge of her awareness.

“You make everything better,” he said.

A brand new year began.

**Last.**

_“Why are we on the roof again?” MJ asked, snatching the joint out of Peter’s hand. “It’s cold as shit up here.”_

_“Oh, is it cold?” Peter teased even as he scooted closer to her to share the blanket draped over his lap. “On New Year's Day? In New York City?”_

_MJ rolled her eyes but tucked the blanket further around her legs nonetheless. They were smoking on the rooftop of Ned’s building in all actuality because of habit. In high school, they never could have gotten away with smelling like weed at MJ’s place, and they knew May would probably want to cover for them but had never been able to lie to Missus Leeds, and of all the rooftops and fire escapes available to them, this one was the easiest to get up and down from._

_So, they may have technically been adults without need to sneak around quite as much, but habit was more than unconscious, it was also comfortable._

_“Do I need to leave you two alone?” Ned laughed from beside them. “Are you about to fuck on this rooftop?”_

_Peter and MJ both let out an indignant stream of_ Ned! _and_ Gross, dude! _and_ Absolutely not _much to his amusement._

_“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” he grinned at them, as far from apologetic in demeanor as he possibly could have been. “But just know I log this kind of shit away for my future best man speech.”_

_He slipped the joint from between MJ’s fingers with ease while they both gaped at him like fish with big eyes and pink cheeks. Ned took a drag, self-satisfied and holding back laughter._

_If Ned Leeds was any sort of third wheel it was that really important front one on a big-wheel tricycle. They really wouldn’t have been much of anything without him._

**First.**

MJ could see the way he wasn’t present on the day of the funeral. She could also see the way he was hiding his absence from everyone else.

Peter was good at being collected in the face of disarray, it was one of those talents that he might have gained from being orphaned so young or might have gained from some of his more eccentric extracurriculars, but MJ could see through it either way. She just knew him like that, the way he knew her, the way Ned had known the both of them once upon a time.

She watched him from a distance as he accepted sympathies from strangers in the small, impersonal lobby of the funeral home, and she watched him crumbling.

So, MJ intervened.

“Sorry, excuse me,” she spoke to a woman that was probably a Leeds Great Aunt of some sort and placed a guiding hand on Peter’s bicep. “I need to steal him for a minute, if you don’t mind.”

She used her very best polite voice, but barely waited for the woman to nod her approval before she was dragging Peter into the nearest single-stall bathroom.

“Em-- What are you…?” he floundered with a furrowed brow as she locked the door behind them.

“Drink this,” she pulled a water bottle out of her bag and held it out for him.

Peter’s eyes were still dull even as he looked at her with suspicion and accepted the bottle. He didn’t take a drink.

“What are you doing?” he asked carefully.

“I’m taking care of you,” she responded simply as she leaned back against the closed door with her arms crossed-- a gatekeeper that would leave him locked in that room until she had determined him ready to face the masses once more.

“You don’t have to do that,” Peter said, eyes taking in her posture and then returning to meet her gaze imploringly. “You don’t have to.”

“I’m taking care of you,” she reiterated as she dug the toe of her shoe into the linoleum. “I need to take care of you right now, so drink the stupid water.”

It was a conversation of repeated phrases between people who were convinced they knew what they wanted but only really knew the comfort of a monotonous spiral. Around and around and around each other in an orbit of shared, but varied, hurt.

Peter cracked open the water and took a long, slow drink. His hands were shaking, but his face was relatively impassive.

MJ recognized it for the coping mechanism that it was, recognized it because she too was employing it. She wanted to reach out to him, she wanted to hold him, she wanted to never, ever, ever let go again.

She stayed leaning up against the door, lightyears away from him.

“We need to head out for the restaurant,” Peter said as he screwed the cap back onto the water bottle-- once, twice, three times in a row.

“Five minutes,” MJ said. “Let’s just… take five minutes.”

Something in Peter released at the suggestion and he slumped to lean back against the sink across from her, mirror behind him displaying the mess of curls at the back of his head, the flush of his neck.

He breathed. He crossed his arms protectively over his chest. He stared at the expanse of linoleum between them.

“Okay,” he said quietly. “Five more minutes.”

They kept going.

**_end._ **

**Author's Note:**

> your thoughts and feelings in the comments never fail to make my day <3


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